PARIS -- For the first time in his Olympic career, after performing his spins and his twists and launching himself vertically into the air, Max Whitlock landed beside the pommel horse knowing it wouldn't be enough.
The Olympics produce some of the best sporting spectacles on earth, with a collection of elite athletes spending two weeks doing elite things. There are over 1000 medals to be won and hundreds of podiums on which to stand, wave and cry tears of joy. But all of that only exists because of the flip side: painful, agonising defeat.
Whitlock suffered that kind of loss on Saturday in what he was hoping would be his perfect farewell from the sport. He won an unexpected bronze at London 2012 and was named Olympic pommel horse champion at both Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020. He is comfortably the most successful gymnast in British history. And yet, at the very end, he lost a brutal event in a brutal way. And he'll never get another chance to correct it.
"I really hoped it could end in a bit of a better way, but I always said coming in here it doesn't matter what the result was, I've made my decision, it's going to be my last competition," Whitlock said.
The pommel horse is as much a test of the mind as it is an examination of strength and skill. It's a game of brinkmanship, and it is ruthlessly unforgiving -- athletes get just 60 seconds to show their best, to straddle the line between difficulty and execution. Those two competing elements always needing to be perfectly balanced to achieve success. But the margins are fine: even the most gold medal-worthy routine can turn sour with the wrong move of a hand or a slipping of the grip.
Just ask Netherlands' Loran de Munck. He didn't enter the arena with any expectations of winning a medal, but he knew that any hopes he had were dashed when he performed one of his spins but allowed his body to fall too low. He hit the apparatus, causing him to dismount. He got back on and finished his routine, but his fate was already sealed. He wouldn't get a second chance.
De Munck's difficulty rating dwarfed the competition's lowest, Team USA's Stephen Nedoroscik. The results at the end read differently though: De Munck finished last. Nedoroscik won bronze.
As for Whitlock, his routine was far better. He was second up, needing to beat a daunting score of 15.433 from Kazakhstan's Nariman Kurbanov. "When you're early up in a tough final and a strong final, it's almost like you kind of are left with not many choices," Whitlock later said. His plan was to "go all out."
Instead, the Essex man fell a little flat. His difficulty rating was the hardest in the competition, but his execution let him down: His legs separated on occasion, his technique not quite as clean. It is a game of very fine margins. In the end, it amounted to a 15.200 and second place. The gold was gone after two minutes of competitive action in the final.
"It was just some minor errors," Whitlock said.
His bad day wasn't over, though; gymnastics can be a brutal sport away from the apparatus, too. Knowing it wouldn't be enough, Whitlock had to sit 10 feet away as the rest of the gymnasts stepped up and bettered his score. First, Ireland's Rhys McClenaghan gave an outstanding performance, one that would eventually land him a gold medal. Soon after, Nedoroscik's safe routine was performed near-perfectly. It dropped Whitlock into fourth by just 0.100 points.
In Tokyo, Whitlock's score would have been good enough for bronze. In Paris, though, he was made to leave with nothing.
And yet, he has a lot to be thankful for. Winning doesn't always bring happiness -- Whitlock knows that all too well. Despite having six Olympic medals on his mantlepiece, he once thought his career had not amounted to much. "I felt like a failure," Whitlock told the BBC in 2022. He had contemplated retirement and took an 18-month mental health break from the sport. He couldn't find a purpose until he decided to target Paris.
This time, though, he is more ready for what comes next.
Unlike the feeling when he landed on Saturday, his future, he hopes, will be enough.
"I think what I do next is what's really important," Whitlock said. "I'm looking to really change that and give more opportunities to children in the grassroots of gymnastics and change the sport for the better. I'm looking forward to that."